When it comes to the Middle East peace process, the Bush administration has held firm on its refusal to talk to its enemies. Now, though, in the waning days of office, engagement with radicals doesn’t look nearly as bad as it once did. And if it works, Bush would have Israel to thank.
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Fading into the background: The Bush administration is running out of time to change course in the Middle East
Like the president who leads it, the Bush administration has been known for holding fast to its views and seeing the world through an ideological lens. That world view explains in part why the administration often has refused to negotiate or even talk with what it considers to be some of the world’s most odious regimes. But, in its twilight, the Bush administration has shown hints of stepping back from its blanket refusal to engage some adversarial regimes and militant groups. The tactical shift, however sporadic, is no doubt a byproduct of the fact that there is now little time left for an administration hungry for foreign-policy victories.
But other factors may have influenced the administration as well. Among them, the advice from some veteran former Israeli security and diplomatic officials who have been making a steady pilgrimage to Washington in recent months to urge officials to reconsider the administration’s ideological position of not engaging with hostile regimes and terrorist groups.
The irony, of course, is that it was Israeli officials who initially applauded the Bush administration’s tough non-engagement policy in the early days of the Bush presidency. In a sharp break from the Clinton administration, President George W. Bush’s foreign-policy team signaled in its opening months that it would dramatically reduce U.S. efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement until then Palestinian President Yasir Arafat was replaced. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used a January 2002 visit to the White House as an opportunity to declare that Arafat “is not and never will be a partner.” Bush, too, called at the United Nations in September 2003 for regime change in the Palestinian leadership and used the lack of an effective Palestinian leader as a justification for his more hands-off approach. Unlike the Clinton administration, which invited Arafat to the White House more than a dozen times, Bush never granted Arafat such a visit, and even after Arafat’s death, Washington took months to step up engagement with his successor, Mahmoud Abbas.
Indeed, at least in the case of the Palestinian question, Bush’s policy of non-engagement borrowed heavily from the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon. Although some U.S. allies tried to prod Washington to take a more nuanced approach, the Bush administration by and large found a receptive audience for it from Israeli officials. “They got it from Sharon,” says veteran Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, now a senior fellow at a Washington think tank. “But remember, the whole Project for [the] New American Century crew had been arguing this for years. They took it from Sharon, but it was also in their circles.”
But in the years since, amid Hamas’s surprise victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections, Israel’s rising alarm over Iran’s nuclear program, and the growing strength of Hamas and Hezbollah, many former Israeli officials have come to see the U.S. position of refusing to engage with adversaries as detrimental to Israeli security interests. And as President Bush visits Israel this week for its 60th anniversary celebrations, his administration’s policy of not talking with bad guys is coming under growing pressure from some veteran Israeli security officials and diplomats who favor a more pragmatic approach.
Although current Israeli political leaders appear to be in close step with the Bush administration, the country’s former security officials did not wait for Bush’s trip to make their case. The impasse over Gaza and the peace feelers regarding Syria have drawn a number of veteran Israeli officials to Washington to urge the Bush administration to reconsider its approach. Among those who have recently traveled to Washington are a former director of the Mossad and a parade of former senior members of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Former Israeli foreign minister and Middle East peace negotiator Shlomo Ben-Ami visited Washington in March to urge U.S. officials to save the Annapolis peace process and engage adversaries with whom Israel is unable to talk. “We need you to do diplomacy, because the military option does not work,” Ben-Ami said at a Washington dinner. “It’s the first time in history that my ally does not speak with our enemies. We need you to engage these parties.”
Others are quick to note that the Bush administration has been capable of negotiating with its enemies when it’s necessary. “The [Bush] administration has been flexible when it came to Iraq,” says former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy, an advocate of engaging Hamas. “When [the administration] ascertained that the only viable option to turn events in Iraq at least partially, if not entirely, in a different direction … they contacted people close to Saddam Hussein who had been … carrying out operations against American servicemen and causing American deaths, and they made a deal with them. … Why do the rules of Iraq not apply here?”
